Both recipes work great for me! I have reather hard water and as long as I use calgon on my dipes every now and then they are fine. Though I have to use calgon even when I use Country Save. Persoanlly, I find this washes my pfs, flats and anything else 100% coton just fine with the regualr amount, but my mf and other pocket pieces seem to need a little bit more of the detergent to get clean. The stuff for the laundry works great though! I have severe allergies due to an auto-immune disorder, and there are so few detergents I can use on our clothes. It gets them nice and clean, and they always smell even better if I hang them on the line to dry! Which remind me I need a clothes line....

I can't say what homemade soap is safe, but I will agree to the don't use it on hemp comment I accidently tossed in one of our Thirsties Hemp Fitteds in this soap recipe and DD woke up yesterday with a red butt. Literally every part her skin was touching the diaper, front, back, sides, were all pink/red. She does have mild exzema which could attribute to some of it, but it hasn't happened with the other diapers, inserts, or pockets that I've washed in it. I feel bad for putting that one on her now. I like the homemade laundry soap, but I will either have to wash her diapers in the laundry soap, or get diligent about washing the two hemp fitteds in different soap.

Do you think that was because of the Borax? I wonder if it would be good to use without the Borax?

I was just telling my DH the other day that I wanted to try making my own laundry detergent and here is the solution. As I want to make it as simple as possible, I think I'll just make the CD batch & use it for both the dipes & the clothes. I've been meaning to make some type of dryer sachets for scents. Anyone have any experience with this?

As for the dishwasher detergent...I may give it a shot as well. Since all of the ingredients will be on hand, I figure it couldn't hurt to try a couple of times.

For other household cleaners, I've been using my grandmother's recipe for window cleaner for years...1/2 cup ammonia, 1/8 cup white vinegar, 1 quart water. It works great and no streaks!

I was also happy to see that the mamas that had been using Charlies were happy with this CD detergent, as I've been using Charlies - and it's nearly gone!

I've been making my own dryer pouches for about 8 months now and I won't use anything else. I have even converted my parents to them. I use a 5" square, cotton pouch (usually a really bright print of heavier nap quilter's cotton) filled about 2/3 with flax seed and I take a 10" by 2" strip of heavy flannel, or corduroy, roll it up really tight and douse it with EO and put that in the pouch as well. But make sure that little strip is really rolled tightly and try to thoroughly saturate it with the EO, the scent lasts quite a while this way. Each pouch lasts me at lest 3 months, some have lasted for 5 months. HTH

Has anyone else's water turned a dark grey when washing with this for the first time? I read up to page 23 and I thought I saw something on it, but I wasn't sure. Oh and I am using the diaper recipe, but with regular clothes ( trying to simplify and having 2, DH might get confused and use the wrong thing)